If I Knew You Were Coming, I'd've Baked a Cake
by Pitry
Summary: It was funny to call it normal, but life can be funny sometimes: that was what Lavender had said, and Dudley, who knew he wasn't very clever, was bound to agree with her.


**Title:** If I Knew You Were Coming, I'd've Baked a Cake  
**Author:** Pitry  
**Characters**: Dudley, Lavender Brown, George Weasley  
**Rating:** PG  
**Warning(s):** none.  
**Word count:** ~8.5K  
**Summary:** It was funny to call it normal, but life can be funny sometimes: that was what Lavender had said, and Dudley, who knew he wasn't very clever, was bound to agree with her.  
**Author's notes: **Written for the 2012 Dudley_redeemed fest on LJ.  
With huge thanks toBatswing for the wonderful beta! All mistakes still in the text are mine.  
Title taken from the Eileen Barton song.  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter and all associated characters and settings remain the intellectual property of JK Rowling and her associates. We are very grateful for permission to play with them.

It was funny to call it normal, but life can be funny sometimes, and if there was anything normal in Dudley's life anymore, it was Privet Drive. Privet Drive looked exactly the same as it had looked ten months before. Privet Drive looked exactly the same as it had looked for the past eighteen years. As far as Dudley's memories went back, Privet Drive had always looked the same - the same houses, the same well-groomed hedges and lawns, the same people washing their cars or working in their gardens or walking down the street.

From the outside, Number Four also looked the same. Mum stopped for a moment on the doorstep, her keys in her hand, reaching for the keyhole but not yet opening the door. Dad was still at the car, trying to carry as many suitcases as he could at one go, and Dudley, whose hands were also full of suitcases, really, really hoped his mother would open the door - now.

But he knew why she was hesitating. He knew how she felt. He felt the same. Maybe they shouldn't have come back.

They weren't actually told by Hestia and Dedalus they could go back home. Hestia and Dedalus had simply looked worried one night, three days ago, muttered that the battle was happening _right now_ and that they had to leave and help the others, and then they were gone. And they hadn't shown up since. Finally, Vernon Dursley had enough, and announced that, if the wizards who were in charge of their safety were not coming back, he wasn't going to stay there and starve and they might as well go home. So here they were. Home again.

And they had no idea what was waiting for them behind the closed door.

Eventually, his mother shoved the key into the keyhole and unlocked the door. She walked inside and Dudley walked inside after her, grateful that he could finally put the suitcases down, and only then turned to look around.

To his surprise, the house looked the same. Granted, there was a thick layer of dust over everything - over the furniture, over the carpet, over the photographs, over the stairs. If he knew his mother, she was going to spend the next couple of weeks cleaning, and still not be happy afterwards. But the rest? The rest looked the same.

No one had touched the photographs - they were still all there, his childhood photographs, photographs with his mother and his father, playing with his friends, in his Smeltings uniform, from his birthdays... He furrowed his brow as he tried to figure out what was missing - because something _was_ missing - but all the photographs were there. Must have been something else.

No one had touched the furniture - his mother's hideous flower-patterned sofa was still there, and the bookcase, and the various cupboards. Even the cupboard under the stairs looked the same. Dudley stopped for a moment in front of it, then continued to the kitchen.

Only there, in the kitchen, was there any sign that the house had not been left completely untouched. There weren't any dirty dishes or broken chairs, and the microwave was still there together with the refrigerator, but someone had left a newspaper on the table. Curious, Dudley walked to the table and picked it up.

It wasn't a regular newspaper. He could tell because the name of the newspaper, the _Daily Prophet_, wasn't a name of any newspaper he'd ever heard of, and because the photograph on the front page moved. He recognised the man in the photograph, of course - it was Harry. And above it, the headline said that the war was over and that Harry had defeated the evil wizard.

"What's this?" someone snapped behind him - Mum. He showed her the newspaper. She read it quickly, pursed her lips for a moment, and if Dudley wasn't much mistaken, she looked a little bit relieved. After a moment, though, her expression hardened. "Well," she said then, her voice crisp and harsh the way it had always been when she talked about Harry, "better get rid of this," and threw the newspaper into the bin before Dad got the chance to see.

Dudley could hear Dad sneezing in the entrance. "Petunia!" he called. "It's all dusty in here!"

"At least the house is still standing!" she answered, and the three of them continued dragging their luggage in.

It really did take his mother a couple of weeks to get rid of the dust - thirteen days, in fact, in which Dudley was told to fetch this and clean that, and would he help his mother with the carpets. And after thirteen days, when even Mum couldn't find anything more to complain about, Dad looked at Dudley and told him that he would have to find a six-form college to complete his education.

"You can't go work in Grunnings without A-Levels, Dudley," Dad said pointedly, even though he never asked Dudley whether he _wanted_ to work in Grunnings. "And after we told Smeltings... well, I don't quite think they'll understand if you returned for another year. No, maybe you could find something in London."

Dudley thought he'd ask his friend, Piers Polkiss, for advice. Piers had left Smeltings the year before, and he probably had an idea of where to go and what to do, or so Dudley thought. But when Piers showed up a few hours later, it turned out he didn't complete his A-levels anywhere and didn't work either. Instead he just talked about a lot of things that sounded like the things that interested Dudley last year, but for some reason, he didn't find them interesting now. He didn't know who the girls Piers was talking about were, and who the singers were, and he wasn't quite sure whether that Britney Spears he kept on mentioning belonged in one group or the other. And Piers still seemed to think that going around beating little kids was a good way to relieve the boredom, but Dudley wasn't sure anymore. It just didn't sound as appealing.

So he ended up going to London the next day on his own, without a plan. It didn't go too well. He tried looking for places, he really did, but they all seemed so serious and professional and not at all the kind that would accept him, not with his GSCEs. He almost mustered enough courage to go into one huge building in Grey's Inn Road, but then he saw a couple of girls walking inside, laughing and talking and giggling, and didn't feel he could walk in after them, so he stayed outside.

By noon, he'd been wandering around the city aimlessly, all the way to Charing Cross Road.

It was then that he heard the voice. Someone was calling his name. "Dudley!" He turned around, and saw - he didn't recognise her at first, because she wasn't wearing her familiar witch's robes, but then the penny dropped and he knew it was Hestia Jones.

"Hi," he mumbled.

"What are you doing here?" She furrowed her brow.

He shrugged. He tried explaining to Hestia about A-Levels before, but he never succeeded, so he didn't even start this time. He wasn't very good at explaining, anyway.

"Listen, want to go in for a beer? I have about five minutes," she said and he nodded. But there weren't any pubs there - any pubs that he could see, at least. Hestia didn't seem to notice. She walked straight into - was that the wall? She disappeared, but he didn't see where. He was standing in front of the wall, all on his own.

Then she reappeared again. "Sorry," she said with a smile. "I forgot you can't see it." She then took him by the hand and led him - _through the wall_. Except it wasn't a wall. Now that he was inside, he could see that it was a door that was made to look like a wall. Probably so that people like him couldn't find it. But thanks to Hestia, he was in. She brought a couple of beers to the table, and they talked for a bit. Well, Hestia talked - he mostly listened. She mentioned a lot of people he didn't know and a lot of places he had never heard of, and only recognised one name she mentioned - Harry's. "... Harry, of course, is really busy, you know? He's helping to rebuild Hogwarts now, but Kingsley wants him to join the Aurors. So many Death Eaters escaped...he'll probably do it if I know him," she chuckled. Dudley shifted uncomfortably in his seat but didn't say anything. He didn't know what Aurors were and he had no idea whether Harry would join them if he were asked.

And then she was gone, she just had to leave, she said, and Dudley finished his beer in silence, all on his own. He wasn't sure whether he should give the barman the mugs back - no one else seemed to. So he just slinked his way out.

Too late, he realised he had chosen the wrong direction. He had gone through the wrong door. There was a stone wall there, not the street. Dudley stared at the wall for a moment, then started looking for a gate. He still wasn't sure about the mugs, and then there was also the fact he would feel really stupid going through the pub again and looking like he didn't know where the exit was. It was better to look for a way back to the street there than go back.

It was then that the brick wall started to move. Dudley gaped at it as the bricks jumped to form a gateway, and a small man in a bowler hat looked at Dudley, bemused, then said, "Sorry, didn't see you there," and continued into the pub. Dudley seized his opportunity and dashed through the gateway and into the street.

It was a street. That much was obvious. It wasn't the street Dudley had expected, though - it wasn't Charing Cross Road. It was - a wizard street, that was the best way to describe it. It was packed with strange people in robes doing their shopping and shops like he'd never seen before - shops for magic books and witches' robes and owls and broomsticks and everything Harry had always come back with at the end of the school year. Dudley, extremely intimidated but also slightly curious, looked at the shops through the big glass windows, but didn't dare walk inside any of them.

There was almost no sign that there had been a war. He didn't think about it, only when he walked across a small alley and saw a half-torn poster. He wouldn't even have noticed the poster if it didn't have Harry's picture on it, or what was left of it. It looked like a wanted poster, like in the films, but he couldn't quite make the words. He turned his gaze back to the street.

Now, with the war on his mind, he noticed something he hadn't noticed before. Not all shops were open. There was a huge shop, right in front of him, with a big sign that read _Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes_, but it was dark and the door was locked. There was another shop without any glass in its window frames at all, called _Ollivander's_. There was a lot of dust in the shop, and a lot of small boxes, and it looked completely abandoned.

_Fortescue's Ice-Cream Parlour_ was next, and also abandoned. A shame, Dudley thought. He would have liked an ice cream now. But the building looked not just derelict, but also on the verge of collapse. Dudley peeked inside. There were charcoal marks on the walls, as if someone had started a fire, and debris everywhere. Broken chairs and tables were stacked in one corner, but the floor hadn't been cleared of other kinds of debris. No one had sold ice cream in that place for a long time.

"Oh!" someone said in a breathy voice behind him. Dudley turned around to see a girl, about his age, with fair hair and dressed all in pink. She had a nice face, but there were huge, ugly scars on one side of it. He tried not to stare at her face, so he looked down, then realised she might think he was staring at her breasts and started biting his fingernails. "Are you interested in buying this place?" she asked, completely oblivious to Dudley's train of thought.

"Er," Dudley started, but she was already talking again.

"I thought about buying it myself, you see. I'm tired of all those treatments in St Mungo's - well, obviously, I'll need to keep on going there, but I was hoping to do something else other than that. You can't really look for a job when you have to spend half your day in hospital, can you? But then I just go back to sitting at home and it's not a lot of fun. And then I thought, 'Well, what _would_ be fun?' and my friend Parvati, she said, 'Ice cream's always fun', and she's right of course - Parvati's often right, even if people don't give her as much credit or don't think she's as clever as Hermione Granger, you know - and anyway, then it hit me! Why not re-open the ice-cream parlour. But you're right," she looked crestfallen for a moment, even though Dudley hadn't said a word, "I guess it is silly. It needs a lot of work, that's what my mum said, and she knows these things, and I'm just usually so tired after the treatments that I probably won't be able to get any work in there. Better you buy it." She didn't look very convinced when she said that last bit.

"I... wasn't thinking of buying it?" Dudley hazarded. "I don't have the money," he added as an afterthought, although that was not the reason he hadn't thought of buying the parlour.

The girl in front of him beamed. "Oh, but that would be marvellous! I want to buy it, you need a job, we could fix it together! Oh, you're brilliant, you are, that is such a brilliant idea, think about it, we could paint the walls bubble-gum pink and put up some nice old fashioned tables, I never cared much for these anyway, they weren't very comfortable." She walked now into the shop, dragging Dudley behind her, and all that time, she kept on talking. "You could work here during the day and then when I finish at St Mungo's I'll come and help and it'd be up and running in no time! Why, we could open before the school year starts!"

"Er," Dudley said again. He looked around. "I can't," he said, but somehow her excitement had rubbed on him, and he felt disappointed when he said that - and even worse for disappointing her, even though he didn't even know her name.

"Why not?" she demanded.

"I'm not a wizard?" he tried.

"Then what are you doing here?!"

"It was sort of an accident. Well, my cousin's a wizard, and then there was this -"

"Oh, that's alright then, I'm sure your cousin would be thrilled you're working here, and no one is going to mind, not if I tell them to shut up about it." She glared all of a sudden, and Dudley wasn't sure whether she was glaring at him or at the hypothetical people who would have said something, but he was sure she was scary either way.

"Besides," she continued, "no one really minds Muggles anymore, a lot of us have relatives - my grandparents are Muggles, and no one minds! That was the whole point of the war, wasn't it - hey, even Harry has Muggle relatives - you'll know who Harry is, of course, if you have _any_ wizard relatives they must have told you! Although it is well known that Harry hates his Muggle relatives, but it isn't because they're Muggles, they're just really awful people, that's what I heard, anyway."

Dudley looked at the broken floor. All of a sudden, the debris looked very interesting indeed. He didn't want to talk about Harry or Harry's Muggle relatives with her, and looked for a way to change the subject.

"But... how will I get here? I can't see the entrance to the pub," he laid out his last objection, but she dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

"Oh, that won't be a problem at all, I can come up here every morning before I go to the hospital, see? I'll let you in and then go there and then come back in the afternoon. So that's alright then, oh, this will be simply marvellous!"

He found himself saying yes before he could understand what it was he was saying. She beamed for a moment, then started talking and planning again. He trailed after her, nodding.

She bought the ice-cream parlour that very afternoon. He went with her to the bank. By then he knew her name - Lavender Brown - and she knew his, even though he still didn't tell her who his cousin was. She didn't ask. She seemed a lot more occupied with the ice-cream parlour and that was just fine with him. They arranged to meet at the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron - that, apparently, was the name of the pub - the very next morning.

When he got home, his parents asked him how did his day go, and he just mumbled that he found something and was starting the very next day. Dad beamed and said, "Atta boy!", and Mum burst into tears and said, "Oh, I knew you'd do well, Duddikins!" and then started cleaning the kitchen again, because she was convinced there was still a lot of dust there even though there wasn't. They had both forgotten to ask Dudley for details, like what it was he had found, but it was more comfortable that way so he didn't bring it up.

**-X-**

His first day working in the ice-cream parlour went surprisingly well. Lavender showed him the entrance in the morning; he spent the day moving debris around and clearing up the space, and then Lavender showed up in the afternoon. She wanted to bewitch the walls so they wouldn't look as if they were about to collapse any moment.

That bit didn't go so well. Lavender was tired and irritable, and the walls refused to do what she told them. After a while, Dudley had to suggest that he would do it the Muggle way. "I could bring in some nails and planks and stuff," he muttered.

Lavender insisted on trying again, but eventually, she sighed and threw her wand on the table in defeat. "Alright, do it your way," she said.

"It's probably really difficult magic," he said in an attempt to make her feel better; her mood was clearly foul.

"No, it's those treatments," she sighed. "They mess up my magic. But that's why I have you, isn't it?" she asked and her face brightened again, and she launched into a whole speech about what he should put where and how he could use it to re-build some of the walls.

He looked at her, full of doubt because he didn't know anything about re-building walls, but he didn't have the heart to tell her so, or maybe he was just a little bit intimidated with her enthusiasm, so he nodded instead.

The next morning, he faced the wall on his ladder, holding a plank in one hand and nails in the other, and he was completely lost. A few years of boxing definitely helped with holding everything together without collapsing under the weight, but unfortunately they did not help Dudley grow another hand and reach the hammer.

"Oi, you!" someone shouted from outside and walked into the shop. The man entered through what used to be the big glass windows, but now was just an empty frame. "Who are - hold on, aren't you Dursley?"

Dudley swallowed, and looked down. Red hair, slightly stout - the man looked familiar. Involuntarily, Dudley's hand shot to his mouth, nails and all. The man was missing an ear, and Dudley didn't remember that one of those Orange Menaces who had once turned his tongue into a four-foot monster was missing an ear, but it could have been. Or maybe it was that war of theirs. Maybe the maniac who wanted to kill Harry didn't like people who messed with other people's tongues.

He kept his mouth firmly shut.

"You are, aren't you?" The Orange Menace accused him. "You're Harry's cousin, I know you. What are you doing here?"

Dudley tried talking through closed lips. It didn't work. Eventually, he took a deep breath - the Orange Menace didn't seem to have any suspicious toffees about him - and opened his mouth. "I'm working for Lavender," he said, then immediately closed his mouth again.

The Orange Menace blinked. "But you're a Muggle," he said.

Dudley nodded.

"Where is she, anyway?"

"Hospital."

The Orange Menace seemed to consider him for a moment, and something in his expression softened. "It's supposed to mess up with your magic, those anti-werewolf treatments," he said. Dudley didn't answer. He didn't know anything about the treatments, and he wasn't about to ask Orange Menace any questions. Orange Menace didn't notice - he was deep in thought.

"D'you want help with that?" Orange Menace asked at last. "I could do it faster with my wand." He looked critically at Dudley's expression, the way he held the plank, and the fact he didn't have enough hands to hold a hammer. "And it will be slightly more safe, I reckon."

Finally, Dudley couldn't keep back the question, even though he was still terrified Orange Menace would curse him. "Don't you have something else to do?" he asked, and immediately shut his mouth again.

The expression on Orange Menace's face darkened. "I have a shop," he said quietly. Then he added, "It's closed." He seemed lost for a moment, then looked up at Dudley again. "So, what d'you say?"

Dudley gave the plank one last look, realised there was no way he could do this on his own, and nodded. Orange Menace's face brightened immediately. "Excellent."

Orange Menace turned out to be called George Weasley, and after making sure that particular wall wasn't going to collapse, he checked up the rest of the walls as well. By the time Lavender came the walls were no longer in any danger of collapsing, and they could really start planning how to use the space. George didn't seem at all in a rush to open up his own shop; he stayed and offered his experience to Lavender, and since neither of them had ever run a shop before and George had - apparently - a couple of years of successful experience, his advice was invaluable.

George's magic came in handy, too. When the Muggle glazier brought in the big glass panels Dudley wanted to put on the windows of the parlour, he could only leave them at the door to the Leaky Cauldron; George helped Dudley carry them inside, through the pub and into Diagon Alley, and made sure they didn't break. When Dudley had to figure out how they were going to make the ice cream - after all, Lavender wasn't always there, and Dudley couldn't make ice cream by magic - it was George who found a solution.

"We could try and use an automatic refilling charm," Lavender said, dubious. She had just finished telling them both a terrible tale of how a wizard she knew had once lost control of such a charm and had his entire house flooded with margaritas. It didn't sound so horrible to Dudley, but Lavender described it as if it were a terrible disaster.

"They're tricky, those things." George was also unhappy with that idea.

"Why can't we use a regular ice cream maker?" Dudley asked. He knew it was a stupid question as soon as he asked it. They both looked at him as if he were an alien. Well, being a Muggle, he was, in a way.

"That's a brilliant idea!" Lavender breathed all of a sudden, and Dudley couldn't believe it, so he didn't even smile. "We could use a Muggle ice cream maker, make the ice cream in the back, and then Dudley could work it even when I'm not here!"

"We're going to need some sort of electricity, though," George said, "or at least some magic to replace electricity," and immediately started planning how to get it to work. "Come on," he said then. "I have all we need in the shop."

George's shop. He didn't open it once, not since before Dudley had first met him. Dudley advanced curiously, and not without hesitation, towards the big shop with the W in its front.

Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes was huge, slightly dark, and very dusty. It had a lot of sweets - which Dudley dared not touch; a lot of tricks - which Dudley hurried to get away from; and some stuff that looked like regular magic tricks - which Dudley eyed suspiciously. Mostly, it was empty.

George went past the aisles as if he didn't notice the dust or that his shop was just sitting there, draining money in rent and council taxes - assuming wizards paid such fees. He just showed Dudley and Lavender into the back room, where there were all kinds of electric appliances, like a food processor and a television set.

"We were thinking of doing something with these," he explained as he started tinkering with the food processor, "you know, all kinds of undetectable charms, thanks to the electricity. When we had to run for it. Figured it's better we experiment on this old thing before you guys buy an expensive industrial ice cream maker."

George tried to make the food processor work by magic, but it stopped working after a few seconds. He then frowned at the electric cord and tapped it with his wand, but nothing happened. Dudley and Lavender sat there for half an hour, Dudley slightly confused, Lavender talking about her Muggle grandparents and how she always liked to play with their 'odd' Muggle things, like the electric sheets and an electric tooth brush, and George worked quietly. Eventually, he kicked the food processor and swore. "I reckon we'd have to build some sort of generator," he said, disappointed, and immediately a smile came to his face. "That would be brilliant, though, building a generator!"

Dudley and Lavender looked at each other in alarm.

It took George three days to build his generator, but - to Dudley's amazement - it actually worked. It worked by magic, but being a generator, there was no danger of flooding electricity all over the parlour, so that was alright. And when they hooked up the food processor, it made the noise Dudley had always associated with food processors and squashed the carrot George threw inside into a smooth, lump-less juice - and then stopped when George hit the button. It was perfect, or at least, it seemed perfect until the three of them walked to the back room of the ice-cream parlour and unwrapped the newly ordered ice cream maker.

"There's no way that huge generator will fit in here with this thing," George stated the obvious. "I don't see how this could work, not unless we keep it where it is and start pulling cords all over Diagon Alley..."

"Oh, George, would you? That would be fantastic!" Lavender started. "You could be in the shop and we'd be here and if there's any problem with the generator you could check and tell us what's going on because you're in the shop anyway, this is such a fantastic idea, I can't wait to see it in action, and I s'pose we could pull adverts all over the cords - we could advertise your shop as well, don't worry, I know it's been closed for a while so you'll probably need all the advertisement you could get to get the customers back in, oh, George, this would be wonderful!"

George stared at her with a slightly opened mouth. Dudley knew the feeling - wasn't this how she got him to work for her, as well?

"Looks like you're re-opening your shop, mate," he muttered under his breath. George scowled.

**-X-**

George re-opened his shop a few days later, to the surprise of everyone in Diagon Alley, with the exception of Dudley and Lavender. The grand re-opening was on a Friday afternoon and Lavender said he simply had to come, but Dudley made some excuse about going to the country, and George, after studying Dudley for a moment, told Lavender to drop it. He then distracted her with something he called a love potion, and she didn't ask any more questions, and Dudley was grateful, but didn't quite know how to say it so he didn't say anything. He stayed at home that afternoon, thinking about the party. Half of him longed to be there. The other half was glad he had stayed at home. By Monday morning, Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes was old news and people who had no reason to be in Diagon Alley other than grand re-openings were no longer there and Dudley was back in the parlour.

Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes was not the only shop to re-open that month. Late Monday afternoon, Dudley was busy hooking the ice cream maker to the cables, with George running from his shop to theirs, when all of a sudden, instead of running back inside, George stood rooted to his spot outside the shop and stared. Dudley raised his head - he really needed someone to tell him whether the damn machine was supposed to be making this noise - when he saw that Lavender was standing outside as well, gaping at something. Confused, Dudley got up from beneath the ice cream maker and joined them.

The centre of attention was an old man with long, wild hair, who was walking with the aid of a walking stick down the street. Everyone was staring at him. No one said anything. Until - next to Dudley, Lavender started clapping. The cheering was picked up by the rest of the spectators, until the old man was blushing. He stopped next to the closed shop opposite of the parlour - Ollivander's - mumbled his thanks to the crowd, and opened the door to his abandoned shop.

"Come on," Lavender said and pulled Dudley by the hand. Dudley had no choice but to follow.

As soon as Lavender walked in, the torrent of words which had become so familiar to Dudley started. "Oh, Mr Ollivander, it's so great to see you here! I was just saying the other day that Diagon Alley isn't the same without you! And here you are! And really, it's nearly July now, and soon all the kids who are starting Hogwarts will need wands and where better to shop for them than Ollivander's? And all the people who have lost their wands, of course, like Dean Thomas, he was in my year, do you know him? Oh, you must, he bought a wand from you when we started school, well, he lost his wand in the war, of course, and he was just saying the other day that he needs a new one and didn't know where to get it, and I said - well, that's when I said that we need you back here!"

Dudley wasn't sure whether the look that Ollivander gave Lavender was the result of shock or confusion. "Yes, yes, quite," he said at last. "But this whole place is a mess."

"Oh, that's not a problem, we'd love to help!" Lavender volunteered herself and Dudley in one breath. Dudley even didn't bother objecting.

Soon he found himself sitting on the floor of the back room, putting boxes in piles based to size and the type of wood that was written on the box. Ollivander gave him a piercing look and furrowed his brow at first, but then said, "I guess you're alright if you're a friend of Lavender's," and Lavender started talking again, so Dudley just gave the old man an awkward smile and kept on working on the boxes.

In the other room, Lavender and Ollivander rearranged the boxes in their proper place in the shop, and Dudley listened to their conversation - or rather, to Lavender, who as usual didn't even seem to need to stop for breath. As he started piling Elm wands, Dudley wondered whether it was a werewolf thing or whether she had been like that before she was attacked. Just then, to his surprise, she stopped talking. Dudley raised his head and tried to hear what was going on in the other room.

"Hi," said a familiar voice. Dudley swallowed.

"I heard what you did," Ollivander said quietly. And then... "Let me see? Ah. Yes. Holly. Yes, yes, eleven inches, phoenix feather... That was... quite a wand you've given up, Mr Potter."

"I like this one better," Harry answered, and Dudley could hear the awkwardness in his voice. "It's better this way. Anyway, I heard you were back, just wanted to say hi."

"Thank you," the old man whispered.

"And Lavender, hi, how are you?"

"Oh, I'm doing great, you know, not a lot has changed in the ice cream parlour since Friday," Lavender said, in an uncharacteristically short answer.

Harry chuckled. "Yeah, hurry up with that thing, I'm dying for an ice cream."

In his back room, Dudley swallowed again.

"Anyway," Harry continued, "gotta go, things to do... See you lot soon."

"Bye, Harry," Lavender said. There was more silence from the front room, and then, "Oh!" Lavender rushed to Dudley.

"Dudley! I can't believe you missed him - Harry was here! Maybe you could still catch him, I'd love to introduce you!"

"No, it's alright," he mumbled, and returned his gaze to the boxes. Lavender looked at him in confusion.

She finally learned the truth a few days later. He was working under the counter - trying to figure out how the pipes connected because they _would_ need a tap, he was sure of it - while she was reading the newspaper and commenting to him about events that were very important to wizards and witches and not very important to Dudley. Until she said a word he recognised.

"Oh, they're removing the Dementors from Azkaban! About time, too."

Dudley gulped. The memory of the Dementors was still vivid in his mind. "I hate those things," he muttered.

"What, Dementors?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Well, of course, everyone hates them, especially after they were so happy to work with You-Know-Who during the war, although I - hold on a minute," she stopped talking, and peered above the counter at him. "You're a Muggle."

"Yeah?"

"How do _you_ know about Dementors?!"

"I was... well..." he hit the pipe with the wrench angrily, because the pipe simply would not move - "I was attacked by Dementors once." He stopped to consider the pipe. "It was horrible."

"But why would they attack a Muggle? What did they want with you?"

"Well, I s'pose it was Harry they were after, not me," he blurted without thinking, still thinking about the pipe, then realised what he had said. "I mean my cousin," he tried to undo the damage, and only made things worse. If Lavender had any doubt which Harry he had meant, he just went and confirmed it. "I mean - damn." He didn't dare look up at her, even though he knew her big eyes were staring at him from the other side of the counter.

She didn't start talking as usual. In fact, it took her forever to speak again, and even then, it was only three words. "Harry's your cousin?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

She thought for a moment. "Well, _I_ don't think you're _that_ bad," she said at last, sounding a bit sulky. And that was the end of it. Next moment, she started talking about the wizard sport, Quidditch, and he returned to the pipe.

**-X-**

One morning, Lavender didn't show up. Dudley stood at the approximate entrance to the Leaky Cauldron, in the middle of Charing Cross Road, and waited for her, but eight o'clock had come and gone and there was no sign of Lavender. People rushed about in every direction, down to the museums and Trafalgar Square, up to Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road, and only Dudley stood in place. Eight thirty, nine, nine fifteen, and no sign of Lavender.

At half past nine, someone finally called his name, but still it wasn't Lavender - it was George.

"Dudley," he said again. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for Lavender."

"She didn't show up?"

"No."

"Hmm..." George said, then brightened up. "I think I know where to get her address. Wait here."

"Where would I go?" Dudley muttered, but George had already gone, turned on the spot and disappeared. He showed up again - out of thin air, to Dudley's alarm - three minutes later.

"Got her address!" he said. "Angelina is sharing a flat with Padma Patil. She lives in Kensington. Listen, I'd have loved to go and see what's up with her, but I gotta go back to the shop." It was the summer holidays already, and Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes was always packed with people, from morning till evening. "Can you manage?"

"Yeah, I'll take the Tube."

"Good man," George said and disappeared back into the Leaky Cauldron, to his wizarding world. Dudley trotted to the Underground station and half an hour later he was staring at the house that seemed to correspond to the address. He didn't wonder for long whether it was the right place - he could hear Lavender already from the street.

"... And there's nothing wrong in what I'm wearing!" she was shouting at someone. With a mixture of fear and worry - and some relief - Dudley rang the doorbell.

"It's ridiculous!" someone shouted in response. Dudley wondered whether they could hear the doorbell with all that noise.

"Well, I think it's cute!" Lavender retorted, her voice much louder this time - she was walking towards the door. Dudley wasn't sure he wanted her to open it.

She did open it, and her face brightened when she saw him. "Oh, hi, Dudley," she said. "I'm coming, I'll just grab my coat, hold on."

"Where are you going, young lady?!" The unknown person shouted from within the house.

"I'm going to work!"

"Not to that ridiculous ice-cream parlour again!" Dudley started resenting whoever it was that was shouting.

"Yes, to that ridiculous ice-cream parlour! Again! I'll see you tonight! Goodbye!" She slammed the door behind her.

"Er," he offered.

"My mum," she answered the unspoken question. "I overslept. Went out with Parvati and Padma last night, got just a little bit drunk, just a bit, not even drunk really, nothing serious, and then my mum started going on about how I'm being irresponsible." She imitated her mother's voice now. "'You're a war hero, you should act like one, you should act like a responsible adult, go find work in the Ministry of Magic, they need people like you, what do you want with that stupid ice-cream parlour, stop wearing pink, look at those scars and start acting your age', blah blah blah blah blah. Honestly, it's like living with Professor McGonagall! 'Do this, do that, you shouldn't act like this, act your age, stop being childish'!"

Dudley nodded all the way to the Tube station, all the way on the train, and then all the way out and into Charing Cross Road. Lavender was talking, and every once in a while, eyeing the people around them, as if to check whether they were looking at her, or perhaps, to dare them to. Dudley had a vague impression that her mother must have talked about the scars more than Lavender had let on, but he didn't feel comfortable to say something, especially not with Lavender's incessant tirade about being a war hero, so he said nothing.

When they reached the Leaky Cauldron, he was surprised to see that Lavender didn't just open the door for him as usual, but walked in after him. Usually he would ask Tom the Barman to let him into Diagon Alley, but today Lavender was still complaining, all the way to the stone wall, all the way to the street. In fact, she complained all the way to the ice cream parlour, where she heaved a sigh and sat down on one of the chairs.

"Er," he started again. She looked at him with narrowed eyes. He wasn't quite sure where he got the courage to ask his question, but in the end, the words escaped his mouth. "Aren't you going to the hospital?"

"I've had it with those treatments!" was the answer he got. "They're not good for anything. All they do is make me tired and make magic harder. I'm not a werewolf anyway, it's not like I'd turn, and they don't know what they're doing."

"So you're... staying here?"

"Yeah."

"Oh," he said, then after another moment, "good," because he felt it would be rude not to say so.

"You know, I've been thinking," she said, and he was sure she didn't even notice that he said 'good', "We should set up an oven here."

"Oven?"

"Yeah, to bake cakes."

"Cakes?"

"Yeah! Think about it! Freezing ice cream - with a hot cake! It would be excellent."

Dudley looked around in doubt. "Do you know how to bake cakes?" he asked.

"I can learn. And so can you!"

"I'm not sure we have room for cakes in the kitchen," he started, but as usual, Lavender wasn't listening. In fact, unless he was much mistaken, she was listening even less than usual. Having cakes in their ice cream parlour had become her new obsession, and for three whole days, it was the only thing she could talk about.

In the fourth day, she didn't much talk at all.

Dudley was painting the walls - bubblegum pink, just like Lavender wanted - while Lavender was reading the newspaper, but for a change, in silence. He wasn't surprised. He saw her in the past few days, and while her magic had started to come more easily, he could see she was becoming more and more tired, the bags under her eyes turned darker and darker, and the scars on her face became an angry shade of red.

Finally, he had enough of the silence. He climbed down the ladder, put the brush down in its can, then sat down in front of Lavender. "I think you should go to the hospital," he said quietly.

"Why?" Her eyes narrowed almost immediately. "You don't like that I'm here? You're also tired of hearing me talking?"

"No! That's the point, though. You've been quiet today."

She didn't say anything.

"You're tired, aren't you?" he asked. "You look tired. And... well... it was the full moon yesterday... and I thought... maybe it's stupid... but you know, we - I mean Muggles - have stories about werewolves and the full moon, and I just thought, well, maybe that's why you're not sleeping well." He looked at his fingernails for a moment. "I like it when you talk. It's fun. Passes the time, y'know. But you've been quiet. It's not as fun. A bit depressing, really."

"Thank you," she said, and smiled for the first time in three days. "You know, people don't appreciate how _tiring_ it is to be cheerful all the time! It takes a lot of energy, you know." She threw a look outside, where a bunch of kids were running towards the Quidditch shop down the street. Then she looked back at him for a moment, and reached for her bag, from which she pulled a small round mirror and examined her face critically.

"I think it's the moon," she admitted, then sighed. "I don't turn into a werewolf... but I can feel it, somehow. You really think I should go?" she asked, and he nodded. "Yeah, they're really getting redder, aren't they. Maybe I should - but, oh, they're bringing the oven here tomorrow!"

"I can manage it," Dudley promised her.

He did manage it - in a way. He was still battling with the different electric cords by the time she was back, but it was mostly installed, and 'mostly' was sort of like done, wasn't it? And he got his reward from her excitement as she walked into the ice-cream parlour.

"Oh, this is superb!" she said. "Exactly like I wanted it to be! And look, there are the small heart-shaped baking trays! We could put some strawberry cream on it! And glazed sugar! I can't wait for this thing to work!"

"Well, it's not going to work unless I manage to hook it up with the generator," Dudley said and kicked the oven. "I think something might be wrong with the generator, I'll go and have a look."

"Sure, but be right back, okay? I want to try and make some nice muffins in this thing, as soon as possible!"

Dudley wasn't back as fast as he promised. In fact, he never went into George's shop in the first place. He froze right at the entrance, and didn't dare walk in.

George wasn't alone.

Harry's back was to the shop window, as he was leaning on the glass, but Dudley could recognise that untidy black hair anywhere. After all, he had lived in the same house as Harry for sixteen years. Next to Harry was another ginger bloke - must be George's brother, he thought, and next to the two of them, a girl with bushy brown hair.

They were laughing about something - Dudley couldn't hear what they were saying, but they were sitting there and laughing and having a good time. Harry in particular was shaking with laughter, and at some point even wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. It occurred to Dudley for the first time that he had never seen his cousin laugh like that.

"I don't think they would mind if you walked in," someone said next to him - Lavender.

Dudley shook his head. "You know how there's people, right, who are really close to their relatives, like, really good friends and stuff, not just because they're family?"

"Yeah."

"Well - we're not." He considered this for a moment longer. "It's probably my fault."

She had an impatient look on her face, like he had said something stupid, but she didn't say anything, so neither did he.

**-X-**

Three weeks later, they finally opened the shop, and there were still two weeks before the beginning of the school year. Lavender called it Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, but added in small letters next to the name, _Run by Lavender Brown and Dudley Dursley_. She also had a grand opening and Dudley helped her arrange everything and even baked the first batch of chocolate cakes, which tasted okay if one didn't mind that he accidentally put some chilli in them, but he didn't show up to the big party. He told her he was ill that day. She didn't ask what was wrong with him. Dudley wasn't sure whether it was because she had so many things on her mind and forgot, or maybe now she understood why he was avoiding the party, and he was kind of glad that he didn't know for sure.

The day after the grand opening, he went back to work, and things went back to normal. He sat behind the counter, made ice cream with the big industrial ice cream maker, normal flavours like chocolate and vanilla and strawberry, and some experimental flavours like grapefruit with vodka or lemon with whiskey. Sometimes some wizard would come and ask for something really odd like spinach or broccoli - and in one memorable case, spinach _and_ broccoli, and then Dudley would make that ice cream, too. When someone asked for it, he baked hot chocolate cakes. The wizards seemed to love the strong taste of chilli. Then, in the afternoon, Lavender would come and he'd have company and they would both talk and laugh. It felt comfortable, it felt safe, and at times he forgot he was a bit afraid of magic.

It was funny to call it normal, but life can be funny sometimes, that was what Lavender had said, and Dudley, who knew he wasn't very clever, was bound to agree with her. Life can be funny sometimes, and he knew she was right that day the door opened and he heard the words, "Hey, Big D."

Dudley swallowed but still looked up and there he was, Harry was standing in front of him. He didn't look angry or hurt or upset. He was smiling. It was a sort of awkward, slightly frozen smile, but it was a smile nonetheless, and it was a damn better smile than what Dudley managed.

"Hi," he said.

"Er, is Lavender here? Only I promised her I'd drop this by her..."

Dudley glanced at the clock. "She should be here in about five minutes," he said. "Maybe ten."

"Oh." Harry looked around. "I guess I better wait for her."

"I could give it to her -"

"No, I wanted to tell her something - "

"It's no big deal, really -"

"It's really okay, I can wait."

They stared at each other. No one said anything. They stared some more.

"Nice place you got here," Harry said at last.

"It's mostly Lavender, I'm just helping her out."

Harry furrowed his brow. "Lavender said she couldn't have done it without you," he said. "So did George."

Dudley looked at the clock again. "It's mostly Lavender," he repeated. Harry nodded, but didn't argue.

"Your cake's burning," Harry said all of a sudden, and Dudley realised that yes, he was right, the cakes had gone from baking to burning. He rushed to the small oven, grabbed a towel, and took out the cakes.

"This smells lovely."

"You should taste them with that chocolate ice-cream," Dudley said, because this was familiar ground, ice cream and cake. "We put some chilli in the cakes and then just a little bit of marmalade in the ice cream. It shouldn't work but for some reason it does."

"Maybe later."

"You should taste it when it's fresh," Dudley pointed out. "The cake is softest when it's just out of the oven."

Harry looked slightly embarrassed. "I left my money at home," he admitted. "I woke up late and forgot my wallet and I guess I could go and get it but by then the cakes would be cold anyway."

"Nah, you don't need to pay."

"Look, I don't want any special treatment or anything, I've said so a thousand times, I just want - "

"You're my cousin," Dudley blurted out before he even had time to think of what he had said. But it made sense, after all. "You're my cousin. Family's free. That's Lavender's policy, that's not mine."

Harry's smile widened. "In that case, I'll take a double."


End file.
